FILM REVIEW OF ''AN ANIMAL CALLED MAN'' (1972)

The title of writer & director Roberto Mauri's flippant, featherweight, low-brow continental oater "An Animal Called Man" (** out of ****) packs more philosophical wallop about the fundamental nature of mankind than his spaghetti western comedy clone of Enzo Barboni's "Trinity" movies delivers laughs. Anybody but completist Italian western aficionados shouldn't saddle up for this half-baked horse opera. The most unusual thing about Mauri's minor sagebrusher, however, is its feminist slant. The gorgeous heroine, a high-stepping saloon dancer, has a medical degree and can practice medicine, but everybody refuses to seek her services since she is a woman. "An Animal Called Man" appeared long before CBS-TV's "Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman.” "Few Dollars for Django" composer Carlo Savina provides a flavorful score that maintains the film's carefree aura of humor.

Everything opens leisurely enough with Johnny Matson (Omero Capanna of “Forgotten Pistolero”) complaining about the inequality of his predicament as he pedals a huge, old-fashioned velocipede bicycle while Bill Matson (Vassili Karis of “Five Giants from Texas”) lies sprawled in a cart attached to the bicycle. “God will punish you for this,” Johnny assures Bill. In a sense, Johnny is right because later the villains shoot Bill in the buttocks twice. Johnny is especially upset because he always gets stuck with the up-hill climbs while Bill gets the down-hill runs. Pausing in a stream, they playfully knock each other around in the water before they resume their journey to Silver City. When our heroes arrive in Silver City, the townspeople ridicule their mode of transportation and trampy apparel. Despite Johnny’s abysmal showing against Bill in the stream, Johnny knows how to handle himself in a fistfight. He dispatches several opponents with adept, acrobatic movies. The Matson brothers plan to participate in a sharp-shooting contest that pays $500 as well as a night in bed with the gorgeous dancehall girl, Dr. Yvette (Gillian Bray of “The Bod Squad”), who practices medicine on the side.

Nobody informs the footloose Matson brothers that the individual who typically totes off the cash prize and beds down Yvette is the local rancher, Mark Forester (Craig Hill of “Siege at Red River”), with an army of gunmen at his disposal. Forester keeps the town under his thumb. During the shooting contest, Bill goes to the toilet. He uses his trip as a cover to sneak next door to Charles Smith’s general store, burglarize the safe, and plunder a small fortune. He clobbers Smith as the man enters his own store. Afterward, Bill matches Forester in the bullseye shooting contest and then tops him again shooting out candles at twenty paces. When Bill meets Yvette, she explains that she came from Paris, France, with a heart full of hopes and a medical diploma that has done her no good. “Nobody trusts me because I’m a woman,” she explains. “All you want is a pretty, brainless female you can play around with, that’s all men want. To live I had to do something, even sell myself to men. I had to do it. There is nothing else for me to do. People here are just too prejudiced.”

Meanwhile, the sheriff suspects Bill robbed the general store despite his alibi. He visits Bill the next morning in Yvette’s room. “Thievery is rare for us. Local folks don’t go in for it. They’re proud of their honesty. You get the idea,” he says and then searches Bill’s clothing. He finds nothing. Later, Bill slips the stolen money out of a pillow casing while Yvette makes him coffee. Our heroes set out to their “rat’s nest of a shack.” Forester’s men beat them to it and dynamite it. Returning to Silver City, Johnny and Bill check into the hotel. The sheriff arrests Bill the following morning and takes him to jail. They discover that Smith has died of a punctured appendix. The sheriff’s deputy explains, “His wife refused to call Yvette to take care of him so he died.” Reluctantly, the sheriff releases Bill. Our heroes buy themselves some clothes to replace their rags. The livery man tells Johnny that he has a very special horse. “He’s been trained to warn you of approaching danger.” They ride out to Forester’s ranch. The gunmen run Johnny and Bill off the property.” Mr. Forester likes to have only the company of the people he knows.” After our heroes ride off, they masquerade as Forester and demand more money from people that have been paying Forester for protection.

Johnny and Bill return to Silver City to visit Yvette, and Forester’s men escort them out to the ranch. Forester is quite insistent about the ground rules. “There is no room for people like you. Your fancy shooting is going to cost you, mister Matson. People around here don’t outshoot me if they know what’s good for them. And we have another score to settle, a more serious one, before out the business of the shooting, first you’ll have to pay me back the $2-thousand you collected in my name. That was a silly thing to do. Did you imagine you could get away with it?” Bill assures Forester that it was all a part of his plan to get to see him. Johnny and Bill disarm Forester’s henchmen in an ensuing brawl and demonstrate how useless they are to the rancher. Johnny has ringing success with an iron pot that he clobbers his assailants with and knocks them out. Contemptuously, Bill observes about Forester’s hired hands, “Your boys need practice. They’re getting too much soft living around here, Mr. Forester. As bodyguards, they’ve had it. Your life isn’t safe . . .” Forester tentatively agrees to a partnership with our heroes and then orders his men to kill them.”

No sooner do they leave Forester’s ranch than the villainous rancher sends out two gunmen to ambush them. Our heroes survive the ambush attempt, but Bill catches bullet in the backside. Yvette digs it out, making Bill her first patient. Later, he is shot again in the backside and Yvette removes that bullet, too. Forester hires a gunslinger from Laredo dressed in black to kill Bill, but Bill guns him down in a fair draw in a saloon. Later, two Forester men invade the hotel room where Johnny and Bill are sleeping. They fill the bundled shapes on the bed with lead and then receive the last surprise of their ill-fated lives when our heroes pop out of nowhere and gun them down! Eventually, Forester’s own right-hand henchman Joe (Gilberto Galimberti of “Viva Django”) shoots him three times in the back.

Vassili Karis somewhat resembles Terence Hill, but Karis plays a scheming protagonist. Meanwhile, gimlet-eyed Craig Hill is appropriately stern and slippery as Forester, but he isn’t ruthless enough for us to hate him. One drawback here is Forester’s death at the hands of his own men. Mauri doesn’t write any memorable dialogue, but to his credit he doesn’t wear out his welcome. He likes to rack focus and zoom. Mauri’s western isn’t exactly side-splitting material, just amusing enough to be tolerable. There are enough shoot-outs, but none are distinctive. “An Animal Called Man” isn’t a savage spaghetti western.

FILM REVIEW OF ''JCVD'' (2008-French)

Martial arts action sensation Jean-Claude Van Damme acts more often than he kick-boxes in French-Algerian writer & director Mabrouk El Mechri's "JCVD," (*** out of ****) an unusual hybrid film with autobiographical, post-modernist, satiric elements entwined with a tense hostage-robbery saga that resembles nothing the 'Muscles from Brussels' has ever done. Indeed, Jean-Claude breaks the fourth wall about two-thirds of the way into this change-of-pace thriller and delivers a soulful six-minute soliloquy about his tortured life as a celebrity that qualifies as the most mind-blowing scene in his entire career. Van Damme recounts the peaks and valleys of his twenty-year career, his bouts with narcotics, and his bouts with his wives. For example, in 1992, Van Damme divorced his third wife, Gladys, had a son with his fourth wife, broke up with her, and then went back to Gladys in 1999. Of course, Van Damme improvised most of this scene in a single take, but he appears startlingly candid.

El Mechri doesn't always succeed with this off-beat effort. This surreal "Rashomon" meets Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon" by way of "Being John Malkovich" is an artsy-fartsy exercise in filming. Nevertheless, you've got to give the guy credit for creating one of Jean Claude's more ironic movies. Long-time, dyed-in-the-wool Van Damme fans will no doubt disdain "JCVD" as a puzzling potboiler with a weird twist of an ending. Non-Van Damme audiences, however, will herald it as a revelation. Since it is so unlike anything that the Belgiam leading man has ever done, the question is what was he thinking when he decided to veer off course with this unconventional entry? If Van Damme returns to his usual rigorous action fodder—some of which is incredibly good—"Double Team," "Hard Target," and "Sudden Death," "JCVD" will be the exception to his oeuvre. Some moments are simply staggering in their depth, while other moments misfire.

Initially, "JCVD" sounds like a vanity project. Nevertheless, Jean Claude not only pokes fun at himself, but he also diverges from the predictable antics of his typical actioneers. "JCVD" bristles with surprises and doesn't even look like his usual stuff. The widescreen cinematography has been muted and bleached so that it looks like a bleached black and white television program which enhances the film's
surrealistic quality. The Belgium kick boxer plays himself, and in real life his actual name is Jean-Claude Camille Francois Van Varenberg. There is nothing vain about the Jean Claude Van Damme that shows up in this 103-minute, R-rated saga. Recovering from an ugly custody battle with his wife over his daughter (newcomer Saskia Flanders), Jean-Claude returns to Belgium, filled with melancholy, jet-lagged out by a long flight, and broke to boot! His credit cards don't work and he isn't
looking forward to his next movie. In fact, he learns that Steve Seagal—in one of "JCVD"'s running jokes—has taken the role away from him because he has agreed to cut off his ponytail. The cabbie that drives him from the airport is a big fan, but she gets to see the wrong side of Jean-Claude and waxes critical about his arrogance.

Jean-Claude gets her to pull up across the street from a post office where he hopes
to obtain money from a wire transfer. Before he has gotten ten steps from the cab, two fans summon him and snap digital photos of him. A cop arrives and tells the cabbie that she cannot park there and the two video store geeks who have taken pictures with the kick-boxing star show them off to the cop. Meanwhile, our brawny hero stumbles into a robbery that turns into a hostage crisis. A local cop tries to thwart this crime and spots Jean-Claude inside the post office bank. He leaps to the wrong conclusion. He assumes Jean-Claude is holding up the post office. A major weakness here is that the bank robbers don't make much of an impression. They're tough and they are armed, but none of them is psychotic enough to make the hackles rise on your back. In other words, they pose a threat, but they aren't evil incarnate. Eventually, the authorities swarm to the scene and erect barriers.

Meanwhile, inside the post office/bank, three desperate gunmen rant and rave about the sudden turn of events. No, Jean-Claude doesn't pull any of his traditional stunts. He worries about dying. The robbers use him as an intermediary to talk with the police. The outcome to this suspenseful story clashes with the traditional Van Damme blockbuster. In fact, the filmmakers furnish two endings and go with the most downbeat of the two. Again, if you're a hardcore Van Damme aficionado, prepare for the worst. The ending is something that you will never suspect. The single-take opening sequence where our hero performs his standard stunts as he battles his way through an army of assailants starts out looking straightforward enough but things subtly change along the way. Later, during the custody case, the attorney for his wife riddles Van Damme's career by skewering the violent movies that he makes. This scene is absolutely hilarious and the self-deprecating Van Damme shows a different facet to his personality. "JCVD" casts Jean-Claude Van Damme as he has never been cast before--warts and all.

FILM REVIEW OF ''CRANK'' (2006)

Freshmen writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s helter-skelter cartoonish actioneer “Crank” (***1/2 out of ****)qualifies as a brutal, violent, live-action, R-rated equivalent of the Energizer bunny battery commercial with agile “Transporter” star Jason Statham displaying amazing resilience as he rants and raves across L.A. on a mission of vengeance to liquidate the villains that are trying to dispatch him. Neveldine and Taylor have penned and lensed an audaciously original, first-person style, shooter video game melodrama for the attention deficit generation. “Crank” will literally nail you to your seat with its runaway plot that updates the venerable Edmund O’Brien death-by-poisoning thriller “D.O.A.” (1950) with a nod to Jan De Bont’s “Speed” (1994) where a bus wired to blow up will remain intact as long as the driver doesn’t slow down. Nevertheless, despite its homages, “Crank” amounts to a wholly unusual exercise in ramped-up, Dutch-tilt camera angles, enlivened considerably by its maniacal meth-head editing, Atari-video game graphics, Google map search inserts, and a gallery of truly warped minority characters. From the first frame to the last, Neveldine and Taylor ignore gravity and accelerate this epic into gear-grinding, overdrive with gleeful abandon.

A free-lance professional hitman, Chev Chelios, intends to quit the paid assassin gig so he can live a peaceful life with his girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart of TV’s “Smith”) who thinks that he earns his living as a video game programmer. Sadly, Chev realizes to his chagrin that he has picked the wrong day to pursue the straight and narrow. Our agile antihero awakens to discover that a vile Asian mobster has injected him with a lethal dose of synthetic ‘sci-fi’ Chinese poison. Indeed, Chev watches with incredulity on his big-screen television a DVD that nefarious Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo of “Shackles”) made for him that shows the dastard administering a hypo of the deadly toxin to him in his bedroom the previous evening. Chev brought this all on himself because he iced an Asian mobster Don Kim (Keone Young of “Dude, Where’s My Car”), but the surprise is that Chev didn’t whack Kim. Nevertheless, Ricky boasts that Chev has no more than an hour to live.

Talk about suspense! Talk about cornering the hero in a cul-de-sac! “Crank” puts our protagonist into a death-defying tight spot like no other movie has dared in a long time! After he listens to sadistic Ricky Verona issue his death sentence, Chev destroys his television in a fit of rage and leaves a message for his disreputable doctor, Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam of “Sling Blade”), to call him back for an hour elapses. Chev goes on a rampage for the remainder of the film’s testosterone-laced 88 minutes that provides a surplus of momentum and raunchy merriment for those willing to suspend their disbelief to enjoy the far-fetched frantics in store for them.

No sooner does Chev discover his predicament than he hits the road in search of Ricky. He calls his transvestite friend Kaylo (Efren Ramirez of “Napoleon Dynamite”) to put the word on the street that he is looking for Ricky. Next he storms in to see an African-American gangsta, Orlando (Reno Wilson of “Fallen”), who he believes is associated with the infamous Ricky, only to learn that Orlando is looking for Ricky himself to collect $7, 500 that the Asian owes him. Chev snorts some blow from Orlando and tears off in his car. At the Las Vegas airport, Doc Miles rings Chev up and listens to his description of the poison: “The flow of adrenalin is what’s keeping you alive,” Miles explains. “You’ve got to keep moving, Chevy,” he adds. “If I’m right, they gave you the Beijing cocktail.” Miles continues with his diagnosis. “It works on the adrenal gland, blocks its receptors. The only thing you can do to slow it down at all is to keep the flow of adrenaline constant. Meaning, if you stop, you die.” During this vital expository passage, Neveldine and Taylor don’t slow down the action. Instead, the entire conversation occurs while the L.A.P.D. chases Chevy who crashes into a shopping mall to elude them and smashes through its with reckless abandon until he slams into the escalator and bails out for a cab outside the complex. As cops swarm the mall, Chev rides off in the cab, plotting his next move. He gets the cabbie to stop at a convenience store where he pilfers a supply of energy boosting, over-the-counter medications and chugs a Red Bull.

Chev takes a plunge with another gangster, his boss Carlito (Carlos Sanz of “Backdraft”) who operates a West Coast crime syndicate, in his penthouse swimming pool and plies him with questions about Ricky Verona. “There is no antidote,” Carlito gives Chev the bad news. “Honestly, you should be dead already. It’s a miracle.” Carlito laments Chev’s hit on Don Kim. “The heat from Hong Kong has been more than we anticipated.” An unhappy Chev stomps away, commandeers the cab from the driver and receives another phone call from Doc Miles. Miles explains that the Beijing cocktail “. . . is cutting off your adrenaline. Excitement, fear, and danger, it causes you body to manufacture chemicals called ephedrine. Now, what these guys have done is introduce an inhibitor to his your system. Dude, your only chance is to massively increase the level of ephedrine in your body to force out the inhibitors.”

The funniest scene follows with our anti-hero terrorizing a hospital for anything to keep his heart pumping at ninety to nothing. Initially, a pharmacist won’t give Chev any epinephrine and alerts hospital security. While this is transpiring a bystander informs him to that nasal spray, which contains epinephrine will "tweak” him. Security pursues Chev through the hospital. He changes into a hospital gown and at gun point forces an EMT to jolt him with a defibrillator. Eventually, Chev kills Ricky’s brother by chopping off the thug’s fist with a meat cleaver and then using the guy’s own gun, still encased in his fist to blow his head to smithereens like a burst watermelon. Now, Chev has to keep his girlfriend Eve out of harm’s way and kill Ricky. He catches up with her about forty minutes into the action and confides to her in a Chinese restaurant that he wants to quit the business so he can be with her. He explains that he was supposed to kill the Triad's number one man, Don Kim, but he let Kim live as long as Kim cleared out of L.A. for 48 hours. At first, Eve refuses to believe him. She walks out on him and he follows her into a public place and booty bangs her in front of a crowd of on-lookers. Half-way into sex with Eve, Chev receives a phone call from Kaylo. Kaylo has found Ricky Verona and Chev pulls out of Eve and heads off to join Kaylo. Predictably, Eve is embarrassed when she realizes the spectacle that she presented to the scores of bystanders.

Chev catches a ride in another cab with yet another ethnic type and tastes some crazy stuff that is supposed to make him like the devil. When he arrives at the rendezvous to take out Verona, Chev gets a queasy feeling. Instead of riding the elevator up to the third floor, he sneaks up to the roof, catches one of Don Carlos Carlito's thugs and throws him off the building. Chev learns that Don Carlos has killed Keylo, strangling and suffocating him simultaneously, and Don Carlos' henchmen advise Chev to find a quiet dark place and die. They will deal with Ricky Verona, but for the time being Chev has become such a media figure with his antics, especially running around in a hospital gown with a steel hard-on that Carlito simply wants him to disappear. About that time, Eve walks into the building and Chev opens up on the Mexicans, blasting away at them while he grabs Eve and they make their escape. After they clear the building, Eve explains that she had to find out if Chev had told the truth about being a hit man.

Doc Miles equips Chev with an insulin pump to feed his body the ephedrine and he goes to visit Don Carlos and finds Ricky Verona with him. Don Carlos prepares to give Chev another injection when out of nowhere appears Don Kim and his goon squad. Another gunfight erupts. Ricky jumps onto Don Carlos' helicopter, but Chev leaps on board, too. Over Los Angeles the slug it out in the chopper. Ricky and Chev topple out of the helicopter and "Crank" concludes with Chev's falling body.

“Crank” amounts to the most jacked-up joyride of all cinematic joyrides. Jason Statham was born to play Chev Chelios and Amy Smart is ideal as his dumb, blond girlfriend. Hust when you think that the plot is set in concrete, something different happens and changes everything. “Crank” features a plethora of bloody violence, profane language (as many as 115 f-words), low-life sexuality, and rampant drug abuse. Virtually the entire cast reprised their roles in the superior sequel.

FILM REVIEW OF ''CRIMINALS WITHIN" (1943)

“Criminals Within” (** out of ****) exemplifiea one of many espionage thrillers that Hollywood immersed the market with prior to World War II. These pictures did not cost as much to make since the stories occurred in the United States and the villains were usually fifth columnists without uniforms. Ostensibly, this movie amounts to little, aside from its director, Joseph H. Lewis, who carved out a reputation for his himself in later films. “Secret Evidence” story contributor Edward Bennett penned the screenplay from “Texas to Bataan” scenarist Arthur Hoerl’s story. Hoerl’s output in screenplays far surpassed anything that Bennett. “Criminals Within” represented Bennett’s only screenplay, though he proved the story for director William Nigh’s “Secret Evidence.” The action replicates the typical Hitchcock thriller that incriminates an innocent man for a crime he didn’t commit. Everything about “Criminals Within” complies with the formula, right down to the racist abuse of African-Americans as secondary characters in traditionally subservient roles. Ironically, the African-American characters malign themselves. The maid character slams a door in her boyfriend’s face and later makes a joke that “it won’t turn black.” Early, she claims that her boyfriend couldn’t possibly know a character because the person is a gentleman and the boyfriend only knows people in prison.

Director Joseph H. Lewis gets “Criminals Within” off to a bang-up start. An U.S. Army officer meets with a civilian scientist at a huge, three-story, brick building, in a locked room with the legend Research Dept. and Chemical Div. inscribed on the marbled glass door panel. The bespectacled Professor Carroll (George Lynn of “Hitler’s Madman”) produces spherical glass containers and demonstrates the formula for a top-secret military explosive. “I wouldn’t risk putting anything so valuable in writing,” Carroll taps his head, “I keep it here.” He mixes the chemicals while the officer watches. “I shall demonstrate the process to you and you alone so that only you and I will know it.” Director Lewis frames the medium shot perfectly so that we see both individuals with the glass paneled door in the background. The shadow of an unknown assailant appears at the door between the officer and Professor Carroll. Lewis cuts to a medium shot of the man behind the door and the guy smashes the glass, thrusts his revolver through the crack, and guns down Professor Carroll.

The Army officer phones Military Intelligence and Martin forms a plan. “For the present, his death must remain an absolute secret,” Martin informs the officer. “I’ll be here to work with you.” Nobody else knew about Professor Carroll’s research except his younger brother, Corporal Greg Carroll (Eric Linden of “Gone with the Wind”), in Selective Service at Camp Madison. Corporal Carroll displays dexterity with playing cards and demonstrates considerable initiative in his job. Captain Bryant (Robert Frazer of “Robin Hood”), Carroll’s superior officer, summons him and inquires about a valuable document missing from his safe. Carroll knows the combination to Bryant’s safe because his superior often mumbles the numbers when he opens the safe. Since an important sheet of paper was never replaced in the safe, Carroll had filed the document away for safekeeping in a cabinet. Initially, Bryant believed Carroll had stolen the paper. Carroll remembers a list of scientists on the document, but the Bryant prohibits him from mentioning any names in front of Lieutenant John Harmon (Donald Curtis of “Bataan”) who is romantically linked with Alma. Interestingly, instead of a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt on Captain Bryant’s office, a picture of Abraham Lincoln hangs there. Bryant is concerned when Alma Barton (Constance Worth of “Meet Boston Blackie”) enters the filing room while Greg is searching for the paper. He fears that she may have access to privileged information.

Bryant detains Carroll in the guard house, but our hero escapes to warn his brother. You see, Carroll doesn’t know his brother has been murdered. Our hero gets a little help from parties unknown (actually Sergeant Paul) when he finds the jail cell key in his meal. Carroll goes to the Recreation Hall to telephone his brother, but his brother’s assistant answers and says he hasn’t seen the professor. Carroll conceals himself in an out-of-order phone booth in the recreation room with Barton’s blessing. Bryant visits around closing time. He tries to pry information out of a reluctant Barton. She conceals coded messages in the high heels of her shoes and regularly sends an African-American private with them to a cobbler, Carl Flegler (I. Stanford Jolly), who serves as the go-between for an espionage ring. Naturally, since “Criminals Within” is a pre-World War II movie, the identity of the foreign government is never disclosed. The cobbler passes the shoes along to men in suits ensconced in another office on the premises. The stylist villains have a torture chamber that they call a ‘fever’ room where they can rise and lower the temperature and force a person to talk.

Meanwhile, Barton grows scared enough of Bryant that she has him murdered in the Recreation Hall. Carroll discovers Bryant’s corpse in time to get away before Lieutenant Harmon shows up with security. Initially, Carroll throws Harmon off the trail by smashing a window and then taking refuge in the out-of-order phone booth again to mislead them. When he overhears the lieutenant phone Alma, Carroll slips out the window and heads to her apartment. Meantime, a sergeant who was a former newspaperman calls newspaperwoman Linda (Ann Doran of “Mr. Skeffington”) and she gets on the case. Linda employs a loquacious African-American maid Mamie (Bernie Pilot) whose boyfriend is none other than Sam Dillingham (Dudley Dickerson of “Kentucky”), the canteen orderly. Clearly, the filmmakers ignored military customs since Sam never wears his cap. Anyway, Sam has been delivering Alma’s secret messages without realizing it. Linda hustles over to Alma’s apartment and Greg arrives not long after. She hides in the hallway and Greg discovers Alma has been murdered. About that time, fifth columnist Stanley Hume (Dennis Moore) arrives and demands to see Alma. Greg clobbers him, stashes him bound and gagged in a closet, and leaves dressed in his clothes. On the way out the door, Linda intercepts Greg. They team up and narrowly miss Lt. Harmon and his MPs heading for Alma’s apartment.

Linda takes Greg back to her apartment and orders him a new suit of clothes because she thinks the military will pick him up based on a description of his apparel. In the meantime, Harmon and his MPs find Alma’s corpse and Hume tied up in the closet. No sooner does the military have Hume in custody than an attorney arrives with a write of Habeas Corpus to obtain his release. The commanding officer-in-charge gives these two a dressing down because they are using the hard-fought for privilege of all Americans to their fiendish advantage. This obvious bit of flag-waving exposition is as patriotic as “Criminals Within” gets in the course of its 70 minute running time. The two fifth columnists are cruising away from Camp Madison when they are overtaken by the inside man, Sergeant Paul (Ben Alexander of “Dragnet”) who is a double-agent of considerably higher rank in his country masquerading as a non-commissioned officer. He reprimands the attorney for showing up too early, thus tipping off the military that something is amiss.

Greg and Linda go to the cobbler’s shop, but he is captured at gunpoint and has to accompany them to their superior who threatens to shoot Greg if he refuses to divulge the name of the scientist. In fact, Greg never learns during the story that his brother was murdered. When Greg refuses to talk, the fifth columnists capture Linda and imprison her in the ‘fever’ room to break Greg. Surprising everybody, Linda smashes the observation window in the room and Greg gets the drop on the villains. The surprising but least believable moment comes when Linda exerts her strength to break the observation window. Everything is neatly sown up in the end with the capture of the spy ring.


This forgettable, low-budget, Producer’s Releasing Corporation espionage thriller appears to have been lensed largely within the confines of a studio. Aside from the checkpoint gate and the base’s name sign, we never see anything remotely resembling the actual exteriors of a military installation. “Criminals Within” was produced in 1941, but the film was not released until 1943. One character sums up “Criminals Within” concisely with the line: “Oh, brother, this is worse than a movie melodrama.” The best thing about this mystery is the identity of the traitor. “Criminals Within” qualifies as an efficient but unremarkable potboiler. Interestingly, Frazer as the distinction of being the first actor to portray Robin Hood in the cinema. Furthermore, director Joseph H. Lewis would helm bigger and better movies like “The Big Combo” (1955) with Cornel Wilde, “A Lawless Street” (1955) with Randolph Scott, and “Terror in a Texas Town” (1958) with Sterling Hayden. Primarily, Lewis is best known for his B-movie jewel “Gun Crazy” (1950) written by blacklisted scribe Dalton Trumbo based on MacKinlay Kantor’s story “Gun Crazy.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE RELENTLESS FOUR"

When Texas Ranger Sam Garrett (Adam West of "Batman") thwarts a quartet of greedy bounty hunters from collecting the loot on recently cleared outlaw Rex Calhoun, these maniacal manhunters frame him for the death of a cattle baron. The title of this medium-budget spaghetti western, “The Relentless Four” (**1/2 out of ****)refers to these trigger-happy, homicidal hombres. They are such low-down skunks that after the shoot Calhoun, one of them shoots Garrett’s horse out from under him so that the Texas Ranger cannot get to town quick enough to inform the sheriff about Calhoun’s innocence. Nevertheless, the resourceful Garrett obtains a horse from an Indian in exchange for tobacco and manages to make it to town before the bounty hunters walk out the door with their ill-gotten gains. “Our paths will cross again,” vows an angry bounty hunter to Garrett before he tromps out the door with his compadres.

The biggest cattle baron in the territory, Jeffrey Anders (Roberto Camardiel of “For A Few Dollars More”), and his cowpokes show up in town, jubilantly firing their guns skyward because they have just concluded a 90 day drive. Anders promises to buy the first round of drinks for them. Anders received $20-thousand for his steers and plans to pay off his drovers. They all pile into the saloon, start drinking whiskey and dancing with the saloon gals. The cattle baron gets into a game of friendly poker with Garrett and loses money steadily until his headstrong wife and daughter arrive in town to take him back to the ranch. She allows him to continue his game in the buckboard with Sam and him using both the table and the chairs from the saloon. At the ranch, Garrett and the cattle baron keep on playing after everybody else has gone to bed.

Meanwhile, outside the ranch, the four scheming bounty hunters create a distraction that lures the cattle baron away from the game. The villains sneak into the house, clobber Sam unconscious, steal his six-gun, and use it to murder the cattle baron in cold blood. The wife and daughter as well as several cow hands awaken in time to see the leader of the bounty hunters storm off on Sam's white horse wearing Sam's Stetson and vest, so that they assume that Sam is the killer. The villains drench Sam with liquor, return his clothes and six-gun, and send him back to town unconscious and slumped over his horse. The next morning poor, ignorant Sam awakens with a sore head to find a hostile crowd massed outside of his hotel room hurling stones through his window. The sheriff arrests Sam, and a trial ensues where the court convicts Sam for the cattle baron's murder and sentences him to be hanged the following day.

Later that night, Sam escapes from jail using soap to make the floorboard slippery and a bluffing his way out of the cell with his finger jabbed in a deputy's back. The sheriff shows up in time to pull a gun on Sam, but somebody outside the jail uses a rifle to shoot the pistol out of the lawman's fist. Sam asks no questions and then hightails it. As it turns out, the man who wounded the sheriff is none other than the leader of the titular quartet. He persuades the cattle baron's widow to pay his three amigos and he a thousand dollars a piece to bring Sam back. The widow agrees to his terms, but she stipulates without qualification that Sam must be returned alive, so that she can watch him hang. The action swings back and forth as the villains capture Sam and he evades them, only to be recaptured and finally brought back to town. Eventually, Sam winds up having to face his date with the hangman's noose. Everybody watches in tense suspense as Sam swings and his body is trundled away in a wagon.

"The Relentless Four" resembles American westerns from the 1930s and 1940s when the hero tangled with villains who wanted to exact revenge on him for doing his duty either as a lawman, ranch foreman, or stagecoach driver. The elaborate plans that these villains concoct to pay Sam Garrett back are far-fetched. Breaking into a ranch house to stage a shooting, then incriminating the hero for the murder is like something that would have happened to John Wayne in one of his old Lone Star westerns. It is rather surprising that the head bounty hunter didn't kill the sheriff instead of just wound him. Our hero lives up to the standard western tradition because he wears a white Stetson. Furthermore, he doesn’t consume alcohol, a characteristic that the writers weave into the dialogue on two occasions.

Nevertheless, the five "Relentless Four" scenarists pull a fast one at the end that will have you scratching your heads in befuddlement, especially the concluding scene where they let us in on the fake hanging. One-time only writer Manuel Marcello De Caso, Federico De Urrutia of "A Bullet for Sandoval," Marcello Fondato of "Blood & Black Lace," Manuel Sebares of "Hell's Brigade," and director Primo Zeglio of the Perry Rhodan sci-fi thriller "Mission Stardust" keep things twisting like a cyclone. In one scene, Sam holes up with a family when the bounty hunters ride in and demand to be fed. The ranch owner sends Sam out the back door with his gun, then re-enters his house where his wife and daughter are setting the table for the hungry bounty hunters. The leader spots the rancher's empty holster and notices a ring left over from a glass on the table and storms out of the house with his compadres firing their guns off as Sam tries to escape. Complicated as all get-out best describes this entertaining, often unconvincing oater where the greedy leader of the bounty hunters ultimately turns on his own men to get more cash. Clearly, "The Relentless Four" lives up to its title, because the bounty hunters are no slouches.

Unfortunately, the producers—probably as a cost-saving measure—hired somebody else dub Adam West's dialogue, so the future "Batman" TV star performs only the physical stuff. If you enjoy Italian westerns, "The Relentless Four" has a superb musical score from veteran composers Marcello Giombini & Franco Pisano. This gritty looking western appears to have been lensed on the same set that Sergio Leone used for "A Fistful of Dollars.” Miguel Fernandez Mila's wide-screen cinematography is pretty good, but you'll have to get a letter-boxed copy to appreciate it. The Encore Western Channel aired the version that I saw and presented it in full frame on with only the opening credits letter-boxed. Helmer Primo Zeglio was clearly no Sergio Leone, and it is not surprising that this dust raiser didn't do for Adam West what the Leone epics did for both Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Meanwhile, Adam West plays the role in a straightforward manner with no self-depreciating gestures.

FILM REVIEW OF ''GANG RELATED'' (1997)

Everything that can go wrong does go wrong for a couple of corrupt homicide cops in “Disorganized Crime” director Jim Kouf’s “Gang Related,” (*** out of ****) an ensemble police procedural thriller that springs one startling surprise after another on its unsuspecting audience. This above-average but unsavory chronicle of a crime coming unraveled boasts a talented cast in a heavyweight tragicomedy of errors. What elevates “Gang Related” several notches above the ordinary gangsta epic is the film’s old-fashioned portrayal of good and evil in a morally ordered universe where everybody must atone for their sins. The filmmakers have borrowed elements as diverse as O’Henry’s classic comeuppance storytelling style and combined it with bits and pieces from big-budgeted movies such as William Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” (1985) and Joseph Ruben’s “Money Train” (1995). Indeed, Kouf’s accomplished piece of filmmaking looks like the flip side of Peter Hyams’ buddy cop movie “Running Scared” with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines, although the cops that Crystal and Hines played were good guys to the core.

The characters in “Gang Related” serve as the pawns of a serpentine plot. None of them exert control over what transpires and the irony of this isn’t lost on audiences. Few ensemble movies reach the big screen anymore, so this proves both surprising and gratifying to see such a polished effort like this one. Writer & director Jim Kouf produced a similar saga with his 1989 crime spoof “Disorganized Crime.” Everything went awry for a gang of thieves in “Disorganized Crime.” In “Gang Related,” everything goes awry, too, but for the police. The chief difference is that Kouf plays it straight right down the line. Although the parable teeters at times on travesty, Kouf never shifts the accent to buffoonery. You know something is different, too, when a couple marquee stars shows up in minor of crucial roles. You can barely recognize Dennis Quaid at first as a remorseful derelict and James Earl Jones’s arrival occurs straight out of the blue.

As Detective Frank DaVinci and Rodriguez, James Belushi and Tupac Shakur create a credibly chummy chemistry. Arguing that drug dealers constitute the scum of society, they set them up for buys, knock them off, and then attribute the murders to gangs. According to DaVinci, "Drug dealers don't qualify as people. Never did, never will." DaVinci and Rodriguez have iced nine drug dealers with this reliable method of operation, using narcotics secretly liberated then later returned to the police evidence room. DaVinci and Rodriguez get the shock of their lives when they learn that their latest victim, Lionel Hudd (Kool Moe Dee of “Panther”), was an undercover D.E.A. agent. Moreover, Hudd’s superior, Agent Richard Simms (Gary Cole), is determined to do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of Hudd’s murder and applies a lot of heat on the L.A.P.D. to find a suspect. Neither detective wants to confess to the crime so they search for a patsy. Several patsies don’t pan out because they have iron-clad alibis, but this doesn’t stop our unscrupulous protagonists from trying to set them up. They bring them into an interrogation room and slide the murder weapon across the desk at them and these poor fools catch the gun and wind up handling. One examines the revolver in detail and then cleverly wipes it clean and sends it sliding back at the cops. Eventually, DaVinci settles on a street bum. No sooner has Joe Doe (Dennis Quaid of “The Rookie”) been arrested than it turns out that he is a rich man thought dead for seven years. It seems that William Daine McCall, son of the founder of a major telecommunication corporation, was a celebrated surgeon who stepped out on his wife with a nurse. An argument between McCall and his wife prompted her to fly into hysterics, enough so to take their two kids and leave their home. Tragically, about a mile from home, the wife and children died in a car accident and McCall goes on a bender. Meanwhile, things keep getting worse for our protagonists. They enlist the aid of a stripper named Cynthia Webb (Lela Rochon of “Waiting to Exhale”) as an eyewitness. It seems that DaVinci is banging her on the side when he is sleeping with his wife. Cynthia buckles in court, however, when defense attorney Arthur Baylor (James Earl Jones of “Clean Slate”) tears up her contrived story under careful cross-examination, and she admits to perjury. Pretty soon the relationship between DaVinci and Rodriguez begins to deteriorate because Rodriguez lacks DaVinci’s cold, calculating nerve to kill people without a qualm.

James Belushi of “Mr. Destiny” plays an out-and-out villain here in a change-of-pace casting. He invests his character with more depth than you would normally associate with him. At times, his performance is so charismatic that you want evil to triumph. In his final screen appearance, the late rapper Tupac Shakur shows that his artistry will be missed as much by music enthusiasts as moviegoers.

Writer & director Jim Kouf has breathed new life into a routine plot by standing it on its head. Half of the fun of “Gang Related” is watching DaVinci and Rodriguez dig themselves deeper the more that they try to dig themselves out of disaster. Usually, in a movie like “Gang Related,” the heroes are the guys who are in trouble, but neither DaVinci nor Rodriguez qualify as heroes. They only character with any shred of integrity here is Cynthia. When she commits perjury, she refuses to divulge the identities of her cohorts. That’s what makes Kouf’s police thriller different and that difference might alienate orthodox crime movie junkies who need a hero to cheer. The ending is absolutely terrific!

FILM REVIEW OF ''X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE" (2009)

Seldom does Hollywood produce a comic book prequel as potent and perfect as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (**** out of ****), a no-holds-barred barrage of CGI visual effects, and brawny brain-dead, derring-do that will overwhelm you with its sheer extravagance in less than 120 minutes—actually a trim 107 minutes. “Tsotsi” director Gavin Hood and savvy scenarists David Benioff of “Troy” and Skip Woods of “Swordfish” shove enough testosterone into this larger-than-life spectacle to fuel an entire franchise. After the anemic as well as dismal closure that Brett Ratner’s “X-Men: Last Stand” provided the “X-Men” trilogy, “X-Men: Wolverine” brings you back to life like a shot of adrenalin to the heart. Reprising the role that make him a household name, a mutton-chopped Hugh Jackman wields the razor-sharp knuckle knives that he deploys like a Cuisinart in the original “X-Men” to slash and gash anybody and anything that gets in his way. Like any really good prequel, “Wolverine” brings the action full-circle so that we learn how Professor Charles Xavier wound up with many of the wards that he supervises in director Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” (2000). Mind you, “Wolverine” lacks the subtlety that distinguished the first two “X-Men” movies, but this prequel makes up for it with high-octane, slam-bang, edge-of-your-seat, action sequences that make your blood pump.

Essentially, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is a melodrama about two mutants that traces their origins back to Canada's Northwest Territory in the year 1845. As the two half brothers, James Logan (Hugh Jackman of “Australia”) and his older, more unstable semi-sibling Victor Creed (Live Schreiber of “Scream”) flee from their family in Canada and seek refuge south in America after Logan kills the man that he believes is his father. Hood and his scribes spend more time probing the back story of the highly conflicted Logan from his turbulent childhood to his tragic romance with a school teacher. Nevertheless, every episode of Logan’s life entwines with that of his unruly brother who suffers from anger management issues. Yes, eventually, Victor will become known as ‘Sabretooth,’ but for now he is just Victor. The credit sequence depicts our pugnacious pair--Logan and Victor--displaying their extraordinary strength, nimble dexterity and protean ability to regenerate no matter how devastating their wounds as they wade through the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam. Logan exerts more control over his bestial nature, while Victor wallows in his blood lust for death and violence, even when it prompts him to turn on his own men.

In Vietnam, Victor plunges off the deep end. He murders innocent Vietnamese civilians as well as American G.I.s. The Army slaps both Logan and him in front of a firing squad. Of course, these indestructible killing machines cannot die from ordinary bullets. They survive the firing squad’s fusillade but find themselves chained up again until General William Stryker (a nefarious Danny Huston of “The Aviator” at his oiliest) persuades them to be "part of a special team with special privileges.” (Incidentally, Brian Cox played an older Stryker in “X-Men 2.”) This black-bag, covert operations unit called Team X consists of fellow mutants, including Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds of “Blade: Trinity”), Agent Zero (Eurasian newcomer Daniel Henney), Wraith (novice Will.i.Am), Fred J. Dukes/The Blob (Kevin Durand of “Smokin’ Aces”) and Bradley (Dominic Monaghan of TV’s “Lost”) and resembles a mutant “Magnificent Seven.” For the record, Wade Wilson is a wizard with a sword. Agent Zero handles pistols like a gunman from a John Woo shoot-up with Chow Yun-Fat. For example, after he empties both magazines in his automatic pistols, he drops the clips, sends his sidearms somersaulting into the air like Wild Bill Hickok, snatches two fresh clips from his belt, and jams them into the grips as the guns fall spinning into his fists. Wraith specializes in teleporting. He’s somewhere one second and another place a second later. Bradley handles electricity like a conjurer.

During a bloodbath of a massacre in Nigeria, Logan quits Team X and masquerades back home in Canada as a ordinary, everyday lumberjack who has settled down with a luscious schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins) with has a knack for getting people to do what she wants, including muscle-bound Logan. Meanwhile, Logan wants nothing to do with his angry half-brother, but the bond between Logan and Victor proves to be stronger than even they imagined. Moreover, Victor isn’t content to let Logan skip out on him and he sets out to track him down with predictable results that forces Logan to confront his bestial nature on grounds that he cannot control. The treacherous Stryker lures Logan back to his laboratory and convinces him to participate in his highly hush-hush program Weapon X and Logan is reborn as Wolverine with an impenetrable alloy known as adamantium that makes him indestructible. Raving like the usual mad scientist, Stryker informs everybody about how he is going to create an army of these killers, but he forgets that Logan can hear him. Logan succumbs to his beastly nature, transforms into Wolverine, bursts out of the tank, and takes off.

Director Gavin Hood attracted praise for his first effort “Tsotsi,” a formidable drama set in South Africa about a teenage hoodlum who discovered an infant and shielded it from the elements. Hood’s second movie “Rendition” with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal withered, but “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” finds Hood back in top form. Hood stages several incredible as well as outrageous combat sequences between not only Wolverine and Victor but also Wolverine and other antagonists. The violence is the stuff of far-out fantasy with no relation to anything realistic. Hood manages to juggle multiple characters with ease so that we’re never confused about who is trying to smackdown whom. Marvel Comic’s purists may quibble about the liberties that Hood and his writers take with the source material, but “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” qualifies as a first-rate, old-fashioned smackdown that will keep you rooting for the hero through thick and thin.